(L-r) Ron (RUPERT GRINT), Hedwig and Harry (DANIEL RADCLIFFE) in the flying Ford Anglia in Warner Bros. Pictures' "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets." PHOTOGRAPHS TO BE USED SOLELY FOR ADVERTISING, PROMOTION, PUBLICITY OR REVIEWS OF THIS SPECIFIC MOTION PICTURE AND TO REVMAIN THE PROPERTY OF THE STUDIO. NOT FOR SALE OR REDISTRIBUTION HARRY POTTER and all related indicia are trademarks of and �2002 Warner Bros. All Rights Reserved. Harry Potter Publishing Rights �J.K.R.

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(L-r) Ron (RUPERT GRINT), Hedwig and Harry (DANIEL RADCLIFFE) in...

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House Elf DOBBY in Warner Bros. Pictures' "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets." PHOTOGRAPHS TO BE USED SOLELY FOR ADVERTISING, PROMOTION, PUBLICITY OR REVIEWS OF THIS SPECIFIC MOTION PICTURE AND TO REMAIN THE PROPERTY OF THE STUDIO. NOT FOR SALE OR REDISTRIBUTION HARRY POTTER and all related indicia are trademarks of and �2002 Warner Bros. All Rights Reserved. Harry Potter Publishing Rights �J.K.R.

Photo: HANDOUT

House Elf DOBBY in Warner Bros. Pictures' "Harry Potter and the...

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(L-r) Professor Gilderoy Lockhart (KENNETH BRANAGH), Ron (RUPERT GRINT) and Harry (DANIEL RADCLIFFE) in Warner Bros. Pictures'
"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets." PHOTOGRAPHS TO BE USED SOLELY FOR ADVERTISING, PROMOTION, PUBLICITY OR REVIEWS OF THIS SPECIFIC MOTION PICTURE AND TO REMAIN THE PROPERTY OF THE STUDIO. NOT FOR SALE OR REDISTRIBUTION HARRY POTTER and all related indicia are trademarks of and �2002 Warner Bros. All Rights Reserved. Harry Potter Publishing Rights �J.K.R.

"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" is designed for a specific audience that just happens to number in the gazillions -- people who love the "Harry Potter" novels. As such, it's not a regular movie so much as a visual guide to an experience that viewers have already had, inside their own heads.

That puts a huge weight of responsibility on director Chris Columbus and screenwriter Steve Kloves, and this time the weight suffocates their movie. Scenes that should have been cut are included, so as not to disappoint anyone. What could have been a small, sweet and genuinely scary film is instead a full hour too long and many millions too fat.

It's still possible, at times, to tell that "Chamber of Secrets" has, at its foundation, a work of extraordinary imagination and spiritual generosity. But just as often the film is as monotonous and despair-inducing as three hours on an airplane with nothing to read but the in-flight magazine.

The sequel finds Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) living with his dreaded Aunt (Fiona Shaw) and Uncle (Richard Griffiths) and counting the days until summer is over and he can go back to Hogwarts to start his second year of magic school. That's when Dobby, a house elf, shows up -- a beautifully realized computer creation, with a sly, sad-sack face -- and warns him not to return to school, that something terrible is about to happen.

The first "Harry Potter" took the time to introduce the characters and set up the movie's world. The sequel can't do the same thing again, and instead of coming up with other ways to humanize the story, it just plunges headlong into action. It says something that the best realized and most pleasing elements in the sequel have mainly to do with inventive gadgets and objects -- a flying car, a screaming letter and an old diary that sucks ink from its pages and sends back messages.

Dobby's prediction turns out to be right, when Harry and his best friends --

Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) -- return to Hogwarts only to discover that something terrible and mysterious is going on. Students and animals are turning up petrified, literally. A secret chamber has been opened, and an unseen monster has been set loose, whose goal is to kill students who are not full-blooded wizards -- that is, those whose parents weren't both wizards.

This sets in motion what is essentially an action-movie story (a monster needs killing, a villain needs discovering), which the movie elongates and pumps up in the usual blockbuster fashion. Once too often, Harry and Ron go for a ride in the flying Ford and have spectacular engine trouble. The Quidditch scene, a highlight of the last "Harry Potter" movie, is reprised here, but here it's just a rush of frenzied computer effects, with a flying ball chasing Harry and trying to kill him.

The worst example of excess is an extended scene in which Harry and Ron have to escape a dark cave populated by thousands of man-eating spiders. With just the slightest alteration of the story, the scene could have been eliminated altogether -- and it should have been. It's in the light magical touches that "The Chamber of Secrets" shines. When the spiders are attacking (or, later, a giant snake), it's just a regular sci-fi movie with standard- issue effects. Radcliffe is an adequate child actor, but he's no action hero, nor should he have to be.

Kenneth Branagh is the one human thing in the movie that's delightful. He plays Gilderoy Lockhart, a self-loving professor of the dark arts, with a perfect bouffant of blond hair and a winning smile. He has no real talent for magic but lots of talent for fraud and self-promotion. Watching Branagh, as Lockhart, continually backpedaling and covering for his ineptitude is the one surefire funny thing in the movie.

Other big names in the cast have no opportunities to stand out. The late Richard Harris lends weariness and grandeur to the role of headmaster Dumbledore, but Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman barely register. Indeed, it's striking that, for all the British talent assembled here (it has an all- British cast), the movie hardly feels English in atmosphere or mood. There's no feeling of history, no sense of mystery, no smell of wood smoke in the air.

"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" is like old English leather that has been transformed into American plastic, as shiny as a toy on Christmas morning. And about as lasting. It's the world of "Harry Potter" that makes the books special, and this time that world doesn't come through. .